CAMRA mission statement 1972

"Feeling bitter about your pint?" was the headline over this extract from the very first Good Beer Guide produced by the Campaign for the Revitalisation of Ale in November 1972. It wasn't a professionally published volume, just eighteen sheets of paper stapled together and posted out to members. It states that the Campaign supports "a really good pint" (the term "real ale" hadn't yet been coined) and the premises where it's served, and pledges to "fight against the spread of all pressurised and keg-type beers and harmful takeovers". The first properly printed GBG was published in 1974. 

The address of CAMRA's first HQ in Salford was in fact the home of founder Graham Lees's mother. Annual subs were 50p (about £6 now).

Reflections on Merseyside GBG pubs

Flicking through the current Good Beer Guide (GBG), I wondered out of curiosity how many of its
pubs I'd been to. I'll never know because I'm not going to spend days ploughing through the whole thing, so I decided to limit myself to Merseyside, which took about 10 minutes. I live in Southport at the northern end of Sefton, which also includes Formby, Crosby, Bootle, Maghull and Aintree. Yes, Aintree race course is in Sefton, not Liverpool.

In Southport itself, my record is 100%, as you'd expect, and in Liverpool city centre, all but one (the Clove Hitch on Hope Street), but I decided to work it out by Merseyside's five constituent boroughs:

• Sefton: 18 out of 19. *
• Liverpool: 21 out of 26. #
• Knowsley: 0 out of 2.
• Wirral: 1 out of 16.
• St Helens: 2 out of 7.
• Whole of Merseyside: 60%.

My first thought was how my pub visits within Merseyside have rarely ventured into three (Knowsley, St Helens and Wirral) out the five boroughs, for which I have little excuse since public transport in Merseyside is generally quite good. 

My next thought was how uneven the distribution of real ale pubs is in Merseyside, with the whole of Knowsley having only two pubs in the GBG, and St Helens seven. If I were to try to explain it, I'd suggest that the greater the economic deprivation, the fewer the real ale pubs. Even in better-served boroughs such as Liverpool and Sefton, there are fewer real ale pubs in the less well-off parts; for example, Kirkdale has one in contrast to Liverpool city centre's nineteen, and in Sefton, Bootle has two while Southport has nine.

A simplistic explanation would be that real ale is mainly a middle class concern, but from experience I wouldn't agree. It would be wrong to assume that everyone who lives in Southport or who drinks in Liverpool city centre is middle class and therefore well off - they're not - but in areas where there is generally considerably less disposable income, there is less room for choice. I've lived in Kirkby in Knowsley, and there are far fewer pubs than in Southport, and I get a similar impression when I've been to Huyton, also in Knowsley.

My conclusion, based I'll admit on subjective observations rather than hard statistical facts, is that the uneven distribution is economic rather than class-based. This is not splitting hairs: being working class does not automatically mean being poor, just as being middle class is no guarantee of being well-off, even though in both instances there can be some correlation. The fact that non-real ale pubs in economically disadvantaged areas are often struggling and sometimes closing, even though there are often fewer to begin with, suggests that lack of money is the problem, not a class-based dislike of poncy real ale, because that hadn't been an option anyway. 

It's surprising what thoughts my casual flick through the GBG has provoked, but they are only my opinions, not a sociological thesis.

Notes:

* - The one exception is the Frank Hornby, a Wetherspoons in Maghull.
# - I mean all of Liverpool here, not just the city centre.

Micropubs ~ method becoming dogma?

A new phenomenon has been appearing in our towns and cities in recent years: the creation of new small pubs in former shops. I remember the pioneer of micropubs, Martin Hillier, who opened the UK's first in Kent, speak about them to the CAMRA conference a few years ago. His approach involved no spirits, alcopops, keg beers, music, TV, juke boxes, and with only real ale, boxed real ciders, real ale in bottles and continental beers, especially Belgian. Put like that, it seems a rigid formula, but - like the term craft beer - it has no authority to justify it or any agreed definition. Do all new small pubs have to conform to it to be classed as micropubs?

In north Merseyside we now have four new small pubs converted from shops, three in Southport and one in Crosby, and I'm told there is a fifth on the way in Southport. There is also one in nearby Ormskirk in west Lancashire.

The oldest is the Inn Beer Shop on Southport's Lord Street, which I have written about many times, such as here; it's five or six years old, and while I'm unsure whether it strictly complies with the Hillier formula, it is certainly the first of its kind in Merseyside. It always sells beer from the Southport Brewery, which isn't very surprising as the brewer Paul Bardsley is the proprietor Pete Bardsley's brother. If this is a micropub according to the formula, it beats the Liverpool Pigeon (see below) by several years.

A few minutes' walk from Southport Station is the Tap and Bottles in the Cambridge Arcade, which opened last year in a former lingerie shop. As you can see from what I previously wrote, this does not comply with the Hillier formula. It has also had live acoustic music once a month recently - a Hillier no-no - and at other times has discreet background music that you can choose.

Close to Birkdale Station (the final stop before Southport on the Liverpool line) you'll find the Barrel House. This bar was converted from a newsagent's and it definitely does not comply with the template, as it sells, among other things, one smoothflow beer next to the real ale, Theakson's Bitter when I've been there. Curiously, it still sells papers and runs its old paper rounds!

The micropub that the Good Beer Guide (GBG) claims is the first in Merseyside is Crosby's Liverpool Pigeon, which opened in 2013 in an old children's clothes shop. This undeniably fits the definition and was last year's Liverpool CAMRA's Pub of the Year. It is close to Liverpool Road (A565), a major bus route, and about a mile's walk from Blundellsands railway station.

In Ormskirk, there is the Hop Inn Bier Shop on Burscough Street, the only one of these I have yet to visit. I don't know whether it complies with the formula in terms of what it sells, but according to the GBG it does have a Bavarian night, a quiz night and live music at the weekends, all of which may exclude it. Despite the name, this pub has no connection with Southport's Inn Beer Shop, but was set up by of Mike McCombe of the Hop Vine pub in Burscough, home of Burscough Brewery.

So are all these pubs micropubs? I think yes: they are all pubs and are undeniably small. The fact the some don't conform to the business model preferred by Martin Hillier shouldn't rule them out. All are primarily beer-orientated, but there is nothing wrong with catering for those who aren't beer drinkers; this will certainly give such places a broader appeal, and I have noticed that they seem more likely to attract groups of women than many conventional pubs. For myself, I have no more interest in drinking in an environment segregated by style of drink than I have by gender.

Martin Hillier is certainly an influential pioneer, but when I saw him speak, he was throwing out ideas, not laying down laws. The fact that he was the first doesn't mean his preferred approach is sacrosanct, or that it will suit all people and situations. What makes pubs, micro or otherwise, interesting is not conformity to a universal template, but diversity. Let's not create a dogma out of a good idea.

I've just noticed that there is a Micropub Association who state on their website: "The definition of a micropub is challenging. It is a set of ethics rather than a set of rules."

The Inn Beer Shop, The Hop Inn Bier Shop and the Liverpool Pigeon are all the GBG.

Local Good Beer Guide pubs 2015

The CAMRA Good Beer Guide (GBG) is fully revised and updated every year and lists the pubs across the UK that serve the best real ale as determined by drinkers on the ground, the local CAMRA members. This means every pub has been recommended by people who know a thing or two about good beer. The 2015 GBG has been recently published and is now available in all good book shops, or if you prefer you can buy it on-line here. 

While you're waiting for your guide to be delivered, here is a complete list of all the GBG pubs in the Southport, Formby and West Lancashire area.
Happy drinking!

Deciding the best

The Grafton in Kentish Town, London has been declared the Sky Great British Pub of the Year 2014. These awards are organised by the Publican's Morning Advertiser, the weekly newspaper of the pub trade, and Sky is a significant sponsor. There are 17 awards; you can find the full list here.

For all I know the Grafton may well be a worthy winner, but what struck me was that of these 17 awards, 4 are in the north of England, while the remaining 13 are firmly in the south, as this interactive map makes clear. Three of the northern pubs are in Yorkshire and one in Lancashire, while the northernmost of the remainder is in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. Most of the winners are in the country or small towns: cities are seriously under-represented. The same bias applies to most of the regional winners.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the awards reflect a certain perception that English country inns represent the best of British pubs, a view supported by the fact that no Scottish or Welsh pubs appear in what is supposed to be a list that covers all of Britain. In fact, Wales is bundled together for judging purposes with the West Midlands, and Scotland with Yorkshire and the North East: devolution seems to have gone right over the Morning Advertiser’s head.

I'm not an uncritical CAMRA member, but I do believe that CAMRA's network of local, regional and national pub awards - decided as they are by ordinary drinkers, not by a self-appointed panel, a newspaper or the industry - provides a fairer and more representative cross-section of our best pubs. It's not perfect, but in my opinion it's the best system currently available.

I'll be publishing a list of our local pubs in the 2015 Good Beer Guide in a future post soon.

Whatpub.com for 96% of all real ale pubs

UK's first website devoted to beer goggles

A new pub finder website, Whatpub.com has been launched today by CAMRA. This is a remarkable achievement by the tens of thousands of volunteers who have researched to provide the necessary information. I think it's an excellent idea. There are other pub websites, such as Beer In The Evening, but this is the most comprehensive national website to find where you can get real ale: it lists 47,000 pubs, 36,000 of which serve real ale - more than 96% of all real ale pubs in the country. I have heard the odd comment like "Not before time!", but that's a churlish attitude, seeing that all of the information has been provided by unpaid volunteers working in their own time and at their own expense. As is the case with the Good Beer Guide (GBG), in fact.

I have only one niggle. As reported in my post yesterday, and at greater length here in July, the CAMRA conference voted several years ago to ban Branches publishing complete lists of their local GBG pubs in case that damaged sales of the guide. I said in July that "The argument (propounded by Roger Protz, GBG editor) is stupid because people don't buy the guide just to find out the pubs in their local area, which they probably already know about - you buy it to see what pubs there are in other areas." This website doesn't just allow you to find the real ale pubs where you live, but tells you the real ale pubs across the whole country. Why would anyone now want to buy a GBG?

The reply would be that the GBG tells you the best pubs, whereas  Whatpub.com lists all real ale outlets, but I'm not convinced that would matter to a lot of drinkers. In fact, I'd prefer to be told a greater range of pubs than the GBG lists. I'm not criticising the website here at all; I'm pointing out that it's quite likely that this free website will affect GBG sales, whereas even now if our local CAMRA branch published the list that I posted on this blog yesterday, they would be breaking an official policy intended to protect GBG sales - although it really does nothing of the sort.

P.S. I've just noticed this is my 900th post.

Local Good Beer Guide pubs 2014

CAMRA launched its Good Beer Guide for 2014 earlier this month. I wrote in July: 'The CAMRA conference passed a motion a few years ago that branches could not list all of the pubs that they put forward for the GBG in any of their publications or websites. They do all the work but are not allowed to use that information locally in case (the ludicrous argument goes) it damages the sales of the GBG ... although the motion did kindly permit branches to publish incomplete lists as "tasters".'

Well, I wouldn't dream of breaking the rules but as I say on my welcome page, 'ReARM is an independent blog: it is completely unconnected to, and does not speak for, CAMRA'. So here is a complete list of pubs in the Southport and West Lancs area that are going into the 2014 Good Beer Guide. Happy drinking!

The 2014 Good Beer Guide was launched on 12 September, and is 

available from www.camra.org.uk/gbg and all good book shops.

Beer Guides

I suppose "The Belgian Good Beer
Guide" wasn't dramatic enough.

I received an e-mail from CAMRA yesterday inviting me to buy CAMRA books, such as London Pub Walks, the Good Bottled Beer Guide and another book by Roger Protz on the cheery theme of another few hundred beers to drink before you die. As a member, I can buy the Good Beer Guide (GBG) for £10, thus saving £5.99, but I really can't be bothered; I last bought the GBG in 2006. I stopped buying it when I realised that I had hardly opened, let alone used, the editions that I did own.

With the internet and Branch websites, it's not hard to find out the decent pubs if you're going to a town you don't know, plus for CAMRA members only there is the What Pub website that is currently being developed. In addition, the GBG is scarcely a pocket reference book: with the ever-increasing number of microbrewers listed, the book is getting bigger and bigger and it isn't particularly convenient. It is the biggest-selling book published by the Campaign, and I think it is a bit of a con. Many of the sales are for presents for a relative, often Dad, who likes to go to the pub; the fact that Dad generally goes to the same pub most of the time and really isn't interested in a list of pubs in places he will never visit is neither here nor there - a sale is a sale.

All the information about pubs in the GBG is compiled entirely by local branches, and it takes a lot of work all done by unpaid volunteers in their own time. The CAMRA conference passed a motion a few years ago that branches could not list all of the pubs that they put forward for the GBG in any of their publications or websites. They do all the work but are not allowed to use that information locally in case (the ludicrous argument goes) it damages the sales of the GBG. I spoke against this, but the conference were, I'm afraid, taken in by visions of tumbling sales of the campaign's best seller if they happened to print in their local magazine a simple list of GBG pubs in their own area, although the motion did kindly permit branches to publish incomplete lists as "tasters". The argument (propounded by Roger Protz, GBG editor) is stupid because people don't buy the guide just to find out the pubs in their local area, which they probably already know about - you buy it to see what pubs there are in other areas. In this instance, commercial considerations outweighed common sense. I'm surprised that there hasn't been opposition to the What Pub website on the grounds that it may affect GBG sales.

As for local guides, one problem is that few branches have the time or resources to update them when they get out of date. While it might be nice to buy a local guide for a town or city, if you go there infrequently, it will be out of date before you can get any significant use out it.

I wouldn't want a good bottled beer guide because, compared to draught real ale, bottled beers are always a compromise and sometimes a disappointment. I can't think of one bottled beer that compares favourably to a decent, well-kept pint of real ale.

So I don't buy beer guides any more. They get out of date so quickly, much more quickly than they used to with the turnover of licensees being noticeably higher than in the past. But if you want to buy one for Dad because he goes to the Dog and Duck every weekend so he can peruse a list of thousands of pubs he'll never visit, go ahead. At least it will be another sale to keep the GBG editor happy.

Happy Birthday!

It's CAMRA's birthday today.  It's exactly 40 years since four disconsolate beer drinkers were sitting in a pub in Ireland, bemoaning the state of British beer, and - unusually for pub moaners - decided to do something about it by forming CAMRA, the Campaign for the Revitalisation of Ale (later changed to the snappier Campaign for Real Ale, much easier to say after a few drinks).  Since then, CAMRA has gained another 122,000 members, so next time you hear someone moaning in a pub, you never know what might come of it - although being barred is also a possible outcome.

I have perused copies of the first two Good Beer Guides to see whether pubs in our CAMRA Branch's area (Southport and West Lancs) get a mention, but there's none in the hand-typed and, I presume, spirit duplicated 1972 edition, in which the nearest pub is the Myerscough in Samlesbury on the far side of Preston.  I also noticed that it featured no Liverpool pubs either, which is interesting in view of the assertion that the Roscoe Head in Liverpool has been in every issue of the guide. 

In the 1974 guide, which looks rather more professionally produced, there are two pubs mentioned for our area:  the Guest House, Union Street, Southport and the Lord Nelson, Out Lane, Croston, both Higson's houses at the time, and both good real ale houses still.  I've cut and pasted the entries into one document and so I present to you our local and complete Good Beer Guide, 1974 style.  Cheers!